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Blobble Bubble Build :: Firetop Mountain :: Thought of the Week |
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The game I played most this week: Blobble Bubble Build
Tower Building: Blobble Bubble Build
While Tower of Goo is Flash-based, you don’t need to do anything silly like install the Flash player to get BBB to run on your device, since it’s been rewritten to work on the Pocket PC. Those of you who read TWIG regularly might think the game is similar to Girders, which I reviewed several months ago. Actually, it’s significantly different and designed to have more casual game play. The idea is to simply build a tower as high as you can by using straight braces between two points. In Classic Mode, you get 40 “blobs,” and you can build braces by taking a blob as it climbs up your tower and adding to any part of the tower. Additional game modes include Tower Ace, where each level has an increasingly difficult height requirement, and Unlimited, where resources are unlimited and the goal is to simply build the highest tower possible. While the game play is simple, BBB is extremely well constructed and seems to have quality built into every little nook and cranny. For starters, the VGA graphics, while simple, are extremely sharp. The animation is liquid-smooth as your tower gets gently buffeted back and forth by the breeze (or rocked by strong winds). You can scroll anywhere on the screen just be tapping and dragging, and you can zoom in and out on your tower. You are also given a running indication of your tower’s height, and you’re also told when your tower reaches the height of famous buildings from world history. Other little details: if your tower is a bit flimsy at the top, your blobs will fall of when they try to climb it, and if you’re particularly adept at building your tower, you’ll get bonus points that’ll make the game a little easier.
Gold Collecting: Firetop Mountain
Firetop Mountain is yet another game in the mix. Story Mode, which is pretty basic, involves collecting pots of gold and solving puzzles in 32 levels across three chapters. The overall goal of story mode is to collect the three parts of a magic item called the Rubin Amulet, which will allow you to confront Old Karn, the Main Bad Guy who’s spreading a plague across the land. Each level involves collecting gold in order to open the door to the next level. Hazards abound in the form of compressors, flamethrowers, ghosts of Old Karn, and doors and switches, which can eat up precious time (each level has a time limit. Probably the most unique feature in FM is Score Mode, which is sort of like a survival mode. Score Mode has you play random levels within a chapter, with the main constraint being the time limit, which you can increase by picking up gold. Successive levels give you less and less time to make it through. Like a few other games in the category, FM focuses on game play over graphics. If you’re looking for the type of game that has the flow of a console platform scroller, steer clear of FM. While the backgrounds in the game are pretty good, the characters are very blocky, and the animation of the enemies is pretty crude. The level graphics and game objects themselves are adequate and don’t try to be 3D, nor are there any special effects in the game worth mentioning. In fact, FM looks more reminiscent of early 1980s rather than mid-90s examples, when this category reached its apex on various console platforms. As a result, the game looks a little cutesy and likely won’t appeal to those for whom graphics and eye candy is a major draw. These criticisms aren’t necessarily a knock against the game; just be aware of what the developer’s priorities were before you plop down your hard-earned cash. FM doesn’t quite have the sophistication of a game like Pharaoh’s Revenge, nor does it have the involved storyline of a game like Blade of Betrayal, but it’s a worthwhile addition to the category nonetheless.
Thought of the Week— 2006 Award Winners Announced Most of you by now probably know that the magazine has selected winners for the 2006 Awards. I actually didn’t take part in the awards process this year; after the monumental effort involved in reorganizing the categories and re-categorizing games in the first half of the year, I wanted to step away from it for a while. Hal, Werner, and I spent a few months and had many frustrating moments getting it all together. Looking at the results of this year’s awards, the categories are thorough, logical, and well-defined. And the winners also seem logical and proper for each category. The winners don’t always represent what I would’ve chosen for each category, but they do appear to represent the tastes of the community. Moreover, the results as a whole seem to make more sense than they did before and I’m sure will resonate more with the public when they’re shopping for games. In case you didn’t catch the results, here they are:
• Action:
Anthelion 2: Celestial Vigilance Just a few comments (I’m not nit-picking the results per se; just adding my perspective to the mix):
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Gall's The Week in Games is a free service of Smartphone & Pocket
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Michelle Talley. This Newsletter is published by Thaddeus Computing, Inc., 110 North Court Street, Fairfield, IA 52556. Allen Gall's The Week in Games Copyright ) 2006 by Thaddeus Computing Inc. |
